


Bad Ping

by ktbl



Category: Overwatch (Video Game), Shadowrun
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aztlan, Crossover, Culture Shock, Developing Relationships, Eventual Smut, F/F, Female Anti-Hero, Fish out of Water, Friendship, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sombra | Olivia Colomar-centric, Technological Kink, Technology, Trust Issues, Vulnerability, antihero protagonist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:28:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24672361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktbl/pseuds/ktbl
Summary: A literal run-in with Tracer at the worst possible moment knocks Sombra for a loop. When she wakes, she is far away from everything she knows, and more importantly everything she cares about: her connection to the net and the hoard of information she has collected. There's no Talon, no Overwatch - but there's something called the Aztechnology Corporation, and that seems to be even more of a threat than LumériCo or the omnics ever were.Sombra will have to rediscover skills she forgot she had, including trusting others, to find her way back to Talon and all of her connections and cultivated power. But if she can get that far, will she even want to?
Relationships: Sombra | Olivia Colomar/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

_ Madre de Dios _ , this was a clusterfuck.

This was not the first time she and the rest of her team had tried to get the payload delivered, but she was going to make sure it was the last. She caught sight of a red poncho in the archway and twisted away quickly. Sombra leaped away from one of McCree’s rounds, flinging herself into an arched doorway and keeping an eye out for him.

“Got you pinned down, Sombra. Be easier for us all if you just gave up on this.” McCree’s lazy drawl carried around the corner to her ears. She hated him at this moment - more than she had when she found him drinking in Calaveras months ago, interrupting her time. Now, she hated that he was there interfering in what should have been one of the finest run-ups to the Festival de la Luz. Snarling, the hacker flexed her claws and pushed up off the ground, leaping onto one of the buildings, and tossed one of her translocator beacons onto a roof not too much higher. It would be a perfect vantage point to get back to when she needed it.

“Watch out, Sombra. Behind you.” The professional tones of Widowmaker burbled through Sombra’s radio earpiece. The hacker dropped down on one foot, spun around, and caught sight of the white-haired gang leader Ashe lobbing a stick of dynamite towards her. 

“Eight eyes and you cannot take her out?” Sombra complained. “Come on, Araña, I expect better.”

“I will take  _ you _ out next,” Widowmaker replied. Sombra rolled away from the incoming dynamite, dropping down onto the ground with a thud. 

Directly into the line of sight of that idiotic, cheerful English fool.

“Hola, Tracer,” Sombra called out, aiming her machine pistol. “¿Como estas?”

“Better when I can get those beacons back for Winston. We’re handling this payload - you’re not getting your hands on it!”

“Out of everyone here, chica, you don’t think I would want México to have better energy? Even if it is LumériCo?” Sombra laughed, pulling the trigger at her opponent. 

Tracer howled with frustration, blinking forward towards her. Sombra activated the translocator with a tiny gesture and a neural command. She had begun deconstructing as Tracer blinked forward again, anger and frustration twisting her usually pretty face. The younger woman’s fingers tried to close around Sombra and caught on - something. Sombra was sure her shocked expression was mirrored by Tracer’s, eyes wide and mouth in a perfect ‘o’ of surprise. Then Tracer’s hand kept passing through, whatever it had stuck on no longer solid enough to grasp.

The light around them both went bright purple-blue. Sombra’s augments shrieked and buzzed a nerve-shattering pain she’d never experienced before, and the hacker felt her entire world twist and scatter into nothingness.

⁂

Her skull ached, like too much mezcal and too much of a fight all rolled into one. She was woozy and there was something strange she couldn’t put a finger on, something that felt off. Sombra sat up slowly, wiping a smear of something off the side of her face. She looked at her hand, frowned, and resisted the urge to run the hand through her hair; her glove and the data cables on the back were now coated in some sort of alleyway goo.

This - wherever ‘this’ was - was definitely not Dorado. She inhaled deeply and nearly retched. Even the  _ smell _ was different, an acrid tang in her nose, a smell of fish, and rotting wood. There was more noise than she was used to, even coming up on the Festival de la Luz, and it was a different kind of noise - more buzzing, and the sounds of old-fashioned motors rather than hoverbikes. Her head throbbed and her augments seemed to be chittering feedback. She swiped with a hand to connect with the local net, identify her location, where she’d ended up when she and Tracer had slammed into each other. ¿Qué demonios pasó?

The link didn’t open. 

There was no bright purple-pink display that popped up when she swiped her fingers across the open space in front of her. Panic began to bubble up inside her, and she scrambled back into the shadows until she pressed up hard against a wall. This was not right, not right at all. She swiped again, and again, and again, and nothing appeared. Her link to the net, all the data she always had at her fingertips - so, so literally - was gone. 

She had never been cut off. That’s what the augments were for, to make sure she stayed connected to everything important in the world - the net, the data. She swallowed and wriggled her fingers, wiping the grime off her sleeve onto her leggings. She swiped with her clean hand, but the response was the same: null. Void. Why was her hand trembling? She seemed fine, except for the raging pain in her skull. With her clean hand, she reached up and felt along her two skull bands, the smooth cybernetic implant on the back of her head. She twisted around and felt along her back - spinal implant still present. Everything was there, so why wasn’t it working? Angry, she issued a neural command that disconnected her augments from trying to access the net. The pink-purple glow in the alleyway dimmed.

She hurt, and it was dark now - it hadn’t been dark when they started, not yet. Maybe someone had kicked her translocator beacon and it had fallen somewhere new? Or someone had waited past that moment where she was still data-invincible, and given her a blow to the head and dropped her in an alley.

That seemed reasonable. It sucked - and she’d have words with people when she returned, very loud words, and possibly some embarrassing stories that would get ‘accidentally’ leaked on the net.  _ Sombra _ , abandoned in an alley that stank of rotten fish and burned-out wiring? She was not  _ trash _ . She also was not petty - she preferred to think of it as getting even. What use was having power if you didn’t use it once in a while?

Fueled by indignation, she stood up and brushed her hands off on her leggings, and checked her personal area network’s integrity. There was a flicker of light and then shadow and she was  _ gone _ , gracias a Dios, proof that her stealth gear still worked, if nothing else. She did not sag in relief, as much as she wanted to. She was  _ Sombra _ , damn it. She had been Olivia Colomar, once - but she had made every effort not to be her again. Sombra knew everything, and what she didn’t know, she knew how to find. Sombra did not panic in alleyways that stank of piss and bad alcohol. Sombra went out and found the answers. 

So why did she feel like little Olivia, all over again?

Feeling more lost and confused than she wanted to let on, even to herself, she stepped carefully out of the alleyway and looked around. It was nothing like she had ever seen before - and it was definitely not Dorado. Unless something terrible had happened.

The streets were darker, not quite as well-lit, and were not quite full. They were definitely not empty like they had been for the payload delivery - but they also weren’t full, like they should have been, for the festival. Instead, they looked battered, half the building shuttered and the other half glowing with ropes of neon light. There were no hovercars, trucks, or bikes that she could see; instead, most of the people were on foot, and-

She pressed herself back against the wall and activated stealth again just to be sure she wasn’t observed. There were no omnics that she could see, but there were definitely other - things on the street. Taller and shorter than people that she knew, but they had more teeth and less hair than she expected. She swiped for the net again out of habit before remembering what had happened. Her pulse pounded in her ears, loud as gunfire. There were people of all types, some of them even with what looked like - horns? And tusks? They mostly just looked like regular people. She blinked a few times, tracking a group of people browsing in front of a stall, what looked like old wiring and maybe some cybernetic hands or fingers. The man operating the stall had a cybernetic hand, but it was a rougher piece than she was used to seeing - not like the sleek lines of her own work, or as fancy as McCree or Genji Shimada. Sure as hell not as nice a set of lines as omnics, even the rougher ones.

The people in front of the stall all had normal skin tones, ranging from dark brown through pale peach on a gringa, and looked like - well, short like Torbjorn, to a man both tall and wide with horns curling from his head. He turned around as if feeling her eyes on him, and she saw tusks poking up from his mouth and a pair of pointed ears. She noticed the ears on about a third of the people passing through, now that she stopped to count and analyze. Not too many with the horns, but more with the tusks, and way too many pointy-eared people for her comfort. 

Maybe someone around here would know Los Muertos, know if her old gang was still kicking around. The first thing she had to do would be to figure out where she was. She wove her way through the crowd slowly, listening in on conversations, trying to eavesdrop and piece together anything she could about where she had ended up. She stopped here and there at stalls selling used tech, tried to gauge what it was - maybe leftover bits from the Omnic Crisis, or just omnics that had been wrecked (with or without prejudice) and some opportunist had repurposed. 

She saw nothing she could identify as omnic. It all had a different flavor to it, one she couldn’t quite identify, but one that seemed to say things like this were a little more common now, so even the more rough-and-tumble could have them. There were signs advertising restaurants and shops - Taco Temple, Stuffer Shack, things she’d never heard of.

Maybe she’d been knocked out and the omnics had done something and Moira with all her experimenting-

Distracted by the potential ways she could have been royally screwed over by Talon, focused on all of the reasons someone might have done things to her, she did not see the man she walked straight into. She took a quick step back, and stared straight into a tee shirt stretched wide across a broad chest. She looked up, and up again, more angry than apologetic, and realized she’d careened into him with the stealth function on.

It definitely wasn’t on any longer.

“Sorry, didn’t see you there.” The words tripped off her tongue and she flashed a smile up at the - 

Oh, this one had tusks.

“Tiny thing like you in bright gear with cyberware like that? You’re not from around here, chica. Not this part of town. Be glad I’m not security, asking to see your licenses.” 

“No, I’m not.” She amped it up to her brightest smile and her biggest eyes, the ones she used on Amélie when she was trying to steal one of the Frenchwoman’s pastries, or get close enough to get her hands on the sniper rifle or headgear. “I was with some friends and I got lost, and someone took all my cash-”

“Uh-huh.” The tall man looked down at her. “Pobrecita.” His voice was inflected with what she was quickly picking up as the local accent; not quite like her own, but not so distant. “Bad choice, to be out here without a credstick and all that glow.” He stepped back. She could see him a little more clearly, well-worn and battered clothes, dressed more like a dayworker than a banger or somebody she ought to be worried about. She looked down in her hand and winced. Her machine pistol still hung loose in her grip, an extension of her arm.

“You looking to sell that, get some pesos to get back to your chummers?”

“My - oh, ah, yeah.” Sombra looked up at him. “You know someone who’ll give me a good rate on this? It’s… custom. Someone told me if I found Los Muertos, they could hook me up. You know them - glowing ink, skulls and bones…?” 

“Los Muertos?” the creature in front of her snorted. “No, nobody by that name around here. Todos los muertos, in this part of town.” He was taller than Sombra by at least a foot and yet somehow seemed - affable. It was faintly disturbing. “Look. It’s clear you’ve got pesos to burn, hermana. That cyberware, that gear - you’re no on-the-outs runner. If you’ve fucked up and been burned by your crew, gotta have been a reason.”

“Don’t know it,” she replied. “They left me in that alley over there,” and she jerked her chin towards the place she’d come from. “Cut off from everything. No credstick, no pesos, and apparently been lied to about Los Muertos.” The idea of her old gang not existing - not even being known about - was as bad as Tracer’s cheeky comments in the middle of a mission.

“So what is it you do, chummer? You a street sammy, a hacker? Don’t think you’re a shaman, with your gear.” The man in front of her motioned her to the side of the road, in between two street stalls. She hesitated, and he snorted, shaking his head. He was bald, she realized; she couldn’t tell if it was by nature or by a razor. 

“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about.” She mentally reactivated her augments - and what should have been their connection to the net. She flicked her fingers again, hoping that her connection to the net had been reset. Nothing. Frustration zipped along her nerves. “If you’re with Talon, getting me back to Reaper and Widowmaker will be worth your while. I’ll make sure of it.”

“No Talon here. Look… chica, you got a SIN?” He watched her and must have seen the blank expression on her face. “Alright. No SIN. You are up shit creek without a paddle, as they say in UCAS. How’s about this - you come with me, back to my gang’s place, otherwise, you’ll end up spending the night - or longer - with security. We’ll get you a bed for the night, maybe some food into you, some soykaf, see if we can help shake your memory loose.”

“Why are you being so nice?” Sombra crossed her arms, or tried to with the pistol hanging heavy in her hand. This was discomfiting. And yet - she had someone who seemed to want to help her, and that was a whole lot better than being dumped in an alley. This was a mess. Licenses for her augments? A SIN? It was all nonsense. But sometimes you had to do what you had to do in order to get the intel and the access. And she hadn’t seen a single public terminal of any kind she could have even tried to hack into to figure out where she was. She didn’t trust charity, or being in debt to anyone - but it didn’t look like she had much of a choice. 

“You’re from Aztlan, and you look like you dropped out of some corp plane, a present to the most desperate guy on the street, all glowing and cybered. It’s that, or you’re a runner who got bent over by her crew. But you’ve got to have skills, to have that kind of gear. But you don’t belong here. If I don’t help you, someone’s gonna take you for a ride.” He smiled, and she was too busy staring at the tusks to see if the smile made it to his eyes. “If you’re worth something, I want the pesos, chica.”

“Hah.” She barked out the laugh, catching herself by surprise. “See, a fellow opportunist I can handle. Generosity? That I don’t understand.” 

“So what name you go by? Can’t be calling you chica and hermana all the time.” 

She weighed her choices and then gave a little flourish. “You may call me Sombra.”

“Sombra, eh? I’m…” He hesitated for a moment, as if choosing between a variety of options. “I’m Paradox.” 

“Well, Paradox- adelante!”

  
  



	2. two

_Paradox led her_ through several streets, stopping a few times to make small purchases. Sombra didn’t quite see how the transactions were handled - no coin or notes ever seemed to change hands. Eventually, he handed her a bag with a bright logo on it, declaring they had stopped at Taco Temple. She snorted at the name, but she’d seen worse - Les Deux Escargots in Paris was top of her list (and the escargot had been pretty bland, too). Her eyes drank in the sights, even though she knew she was being watched with equal or greater curiosity by the locals. This wasn’t Rio or Lijian or King’s Row, and it sure as hell wasn’t Dorado unless things had gone really, really badly. She swiped a gloved finger along the side of a building and looked at it with narrowed eyes. No matter how bad things got, there had never been this patina on everything, a sort of layer of dirt and grime that she was pretty sure had been caked on for decades. 

Paradox wasn’t rushing them, but it was clear her newfound guide had some tasks to do and a short time to do them in. As the darkness wrapped around them, she found herself holding several bags, and then being led to an even more unsavory part of town - if such a thing had been possible. Where there could have, should have, been bright lights, there was the crackling look of neon and the haze of light pollution. Shadows still filled up every unoccupied space they could. She was nudged through a door into a battered tenement building with boarded-up windows, a few glimmers of light leaking out in the street. He led her up several flights of stairs and down a hall, and then to a corner apartment.

She wasn’t certain how many rooms made up the warren - there were two doors and a dark hallway off the main room when Paradox almost pushed her inside. One wall had a long desk that made her think of a workstation, stacked with circuitry, cables, pliers, plastic and metal and rubber and bits and pieces of unidentifiable things. There were other pieces of technology scattered around the room, what she guessed were viewing devices of some kind. Enough was familiar to her that it didn’t seem like such a difficult stretch that this could just be some part of the world where things had gone differently. 

“So show me this tech, chica. Half of this looks like you’re corporate and they’re gonna be knocking down the door to get you back.” Paradox sat down at the table, looking at her expectantly. She sighed and spun a chair around, straddling it with her arms over the back.

“Girl’s allowed to keep a couple of secrets, right?” She eyed him, and he tsked at her and she sighed. “Alright. There are a couple of things here. Gesture-based data manipulation, for one. It generates a video-audio display for others.” She gestured with her gloves, clicking the long fingernails together and then moving them like she did when she wanted to pull up an image, or select a file. 

Nothing happened. 

“All of this should work.” Sombra pulled off her gloves, laying them down on the table and looking at the cables that connected the bright pink fingernails to the data ports in her bodysuit. They were external - but even her neural connection sat silent, the little part of her brain that was used to filtering net information gone still. It was like being shut off from everything, and she hid her terror behind bravado. “It’s all connected to the net, or at least it was before whatever happened… happened.” She clucked her tongue in annoyance. “But I can’t get onto the net.”

“You mean the Matrix? Chummer, nobody calls it the net anymore.” The ork laughed and shook his head. “We can connect you to the Matrix, but you’re gonna need a commlink and a SIN if you want to do any jobs. Unless.” He sucked in on his teeth, and it was an odd sight with the two short tusks. This new situation was going to take a lot of getting used to. She refused to think of it as her new normal.

“Unless?” Sombra looked up, running her hands through her hair, adjusting it. Her augments - her cyberware, she corrected herself - were still a lucent pink even in the low light of the squat. They weren’t connected to anything, but they were still running. It had to have been at least an hour in this place, and nothing internal had popped any errors, for whatever _that_ was worth. Right now it was cold comfort. She poked at the thing claiming to be a taco in front of her, and up at Paradox again. “You got an alternative?”

“My crew, we’re all runners - shadowrunners. We do work that doesn’t go through the usual channels. You know, the kind of jobs that people don’t always want to know they’re hiring for?”

“Comprendo,” she answered, looking at her gloves again. “I’m used to that. I’m good at it. Not sure how good I am, now, until I get into the ne - the Matrix - again.”

“To get you a decent deck, a commlink, a SIN, won’t be cheap. Take a few jobs to earn those pesos.” Paradox looked at her, considering. “But you prove you know what you’re doing, maybe we can help you get set up. You earn it back, and if you’re good like you say, it won’t take you very long. Especially if we get some big jobs. Or you could go see someone and maybe sell some of your gear.” 

“What is this SIN, and how much do they cost?” Everything had a price. Her fingers brushed against the translocators on her sash - likely her only way home if she could ever figure out how to reverse-engineer what had happened to her. The idea of selling any of her upgrades repulsed her - they were a part of her! - but maybe she could bargain for replicating her tech. Still, that was her one backup. She was not sure she wanted to sign up for something without knowing how long she’d be indebted for - if she could come up with the cash easy by selling the gloves, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. 

“It’s an ident number. Real one gets you everything. Fake one, hope it’s a good fake or you’re good as dead. An okay one now, two-point-five million pesos. Top of the line, jobs and accounts and history and everything? That’s… a lot more..”

She nearly choked. “What about living off the grid?” It didn’t sound cheap. She’d figured out the net with very little help when she was little; this couldn’t be that hard. A basic SIN seemed like it would get her what she needed, get into this Matrix, and she could rebuild herself from there. As far off the grid as she could get.

“Almost impossible unless you have a good gang to run with. There are places you can’t go without broadcasting your SIN so they know you’re no criminal. That’s why even those of us who live in the shadows have something good enough for basic Matrix access - and getting paid.” He grinned at her again, baring all those teeth and tusks. “Hackers - or deckers - we just make sure we have all of what we need.”

“This is gonna be more of a pain in the ass than I expected,” she grumbled. “You ever hear of anyone called Lumérico? Big company?”

“No.”

“Damn it,” she swore. “I’m going to have to go back to scratch for everything.” Sombra flexed her fingers with annoyance, itchy to connect to something, to start hunting for data again, amassing the power and information she craved. 

“Not like that. Eat up,” Paradox said, pointing at the bag, “and then you can go pass out on one of the mattresses in the side room. Expecting to have a meeting tonight, me and a couple of the other runners - you can meet everyone then. But we gotta get you fed, and changed.”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” She jerked her chin up at him, indignant.

“I could start now and not finish til next month. You’re not ready to be flash like that right now, especially with all the augments. They’ll nail you as a runner except you’re not, and you’ll get in over your head.” Her mouth twisted at his words and he chuckled. “Look, I’m not saying it to be mean, I’m saying it because it’s true. Can you even find Aztlan on a map? Tell me two other corps? Hell, have you ever even seen an ork before?”

Her silence was enough of an answer. She took a bite of the taco in front of her and then nearly spat it out, tastebuds screaming at the violation. “What is this?”

“Soycheese, krill, meat substitutes, the usual.” The ork tucked into his own food, appearing to enjoy it, and Sombra’s nose wrinkled, staring at the suddenly unappetizing meal in front of her. “What, nothing like this where you come from? What kinda drek you eat, then?”

“No. If I want a taco, I go get something with _meat_ , you know?” She picked up a piece of the shredded soycheese.

“You really were living the high life,” he snorted, “to get meat like that. Nobody’s got that kind of luxury here, ‘specially not shadowrunners. That’s the best we can offer you right now, unless you suddenly find yourself with credsticks everywhere and more pesos than you know what to do with. Eat that, then go pass out. I’ll get you up when we’re gonna have the meet and go over the op. Figure out if you’ll run this with us or not. And you can drop a little more about yourself then.”

“Gotcha.” She looked down at her bare fingers, at the fake food, and closed her eyes. Maybe it wouldn’t taste so terrible if she couldn’t see it, if she didn’t think about it. “Can I ask you a couple of questions in the mean time?”

“Maybe. Depends on what it is.” He began resolutely shoveling food into his face, and she simply watched for a few moments at how he managed with tusks and teeth. 

To hell with it, she’d throw it out there, because there was no way of figuring out what she didn’t know when she didn’t even have a baseline. “All of - this. You. The tusks, the guys with horns, what _is_ that? And I haven’t seen a single omnic here, either. Is this some kind of enclave?”

He paused mid-chew, mouth open and eyebrows arched upwards in pure shock. He sucked in the rest of the food, barely chewing. 

“You really don’t know? Sounds like you’re the one from the enclave. No offense,” he added with a snort, “but world’s been like this since the Awakening. Way back when, over fifty years ago - 2011 - whole bunch of stuff went down.” She looked at the soy-krill monstrosity in front of her, sighed, and began to eat as Paradox spoke. “Long and short of it is VITAS killed a whole bunch of people, and babies started being born, looking like elves or dwarves out of old holovids. Decade later, bunch more had a change before they were even born, looked like me - orks - and also the trolls. But near Christmas of 2011, dragons showed up. And it’s been like that since. Magic and tech, working together. World’s mostly run by the corps now, big business conglomerates. Aztechnology owns this,” and he pointed at the Taco Temple bag, “along with Stuffer Shack and half the clothes on my back. It or its subsidiaries made almost all the stuff in this place.” 

As he explained, Sombra’s brain tried to absorb the words, but they just washed over her. Elves? Trolls? And he was an… ork? Paradox rambled on about VITAS and HMHVV, mages and shamans and riggers, and it made no sense to her. 

Where was Talon in all of this? And Overwatch? Genetically engineered _hamsters_ made more sense than trolls, but HMHVV sounded like something Moira would have cooked up for fun some weekend. She reached automatically with her neural connection to the internet, and then felt the blank space where it should have been. This was going to take way too much getting used to. She refused to get used to it.

She swallowed the last of the strange-tasting food and rubbed her temples. “This is just - this is muy loco, you know?” 

“So what about you? Where are you from, that you don’t know basic world history, amiga?” He crossed his arms and leaned back, and she closed her eyes in response. She opened them and looked down at her hands before looking back up. 

“Yesterday, I would have told you México,” she said after a long moment. “Orphaned because of the Omnic Crisis - whole bunch of robots with AI decided to make their mark on the world, and we’re still dealing with the fallout. Wars in Korea and Russia never stopped.” 

“ ¡No mames!” Paradox pushed back, swearing. “Never heard about anything like that.”

“Yeah. So - I’m definitely not from around here.” She ran a hand through her hair, and then checked her neural connectors out of habit, fingers playing over them. “I gotta think on this.”

“No shit.” He stood up and she followed, and the ork jerked his chin as they walked out of the room. “Bathroom’s there, careful with the water, not much hot and it’s a little rusty sometimes. You can take the bed in there on the far side. Not much but should be enough.”

Sombra surveyed the room - mattresses on rickety bed frames, more tech on the walls, but the beautiful anachronism that stood out was a giant mirror on an antique stand. Amélie had one, the kind you’d see in old vids or at someone’s fancy house… but it _was_ Amélie, and if anyone was going to have one, it would be the ex-prima ballerina. Classiest lady in Talon, if not the world. It was her last coherent thought as she fell asleep, brain simply unable to keep up the charade of understanding what had happened, and desperate for sleep to collect its knowledge about what had just happened and find a way to process it.

She wan’t sure how much time had passed when she woke to a new voice, mildly indignant. Woman’s voice, Spanish-speaking, with a hint of some accent to it.

“So why did you bring home a puppy?”

“Not a puppy, Araceli. Think she’s going to be useful.” 

“Well, I did not bring back enough for an extra tonight, omae. Met with the Johnson, though. You can bring the puppy if she won’t get us killed.” 

“I don’t think she will - not as long as we get her set up. She needs a commlink, a SIN, and a deck.”

“Not coming out of the gang’s funds,” the other voice said sharply. 

“I’ll spot her, already talked about it. Just need to get the gear, and I know where to get it if we’re all agreed to give her a go. Relax, Ara, I think she’s good - you should see her augments. Whatever happened fried her, fried them, but she’s got to be a good decker. And since what happened with Matéo-”

“Don’t remind me.” The words were even harsher, and Sombra would have bet her right hand the woman was choking back some kind of emotion. She wanted to hack into the local monitoring network and see what there was, but - like always - there was nothing. She knotted her hands in the blanket and then pushed it off. Only way to get back to normal would be getting access to their Matrix. “Fine. We’ll get her geared up and she can earn her keep. If she’s good, we won’t sell her to the highest bidder. Pretty sure someone would want her if she’s that augmented up, like you say.”

“Wait til you see her.” Paradox’s voice was confident. 

“I don’t like how much you’re willing to trust her, and you’ve known her only a couple of hours. This isn’t like you.”

“Araceli, have I ever been wrong about anyone?”

There was a silence, and Sombra sighed. Sounded like she would be the first one, and he wouldn’t be happy with her when it was all said and done. She levered herself up out of the bed and rolled her head around on her neck, straightened her clothes out, ran a hand through her hair. 

“Fine,” the woman said. “Get her up and we can babysit her til the rest of the crew gets here and we go over the run.”

“Can she use-“ the ork cut himself off short. “She’s gonna need a deck and everything.”

“She’s not using Matéo’s. You want her to have a deck and get her set up, you can take her out for it.” The woman’s voice was definitely tight, trying not to become thick in all the wrong places, and Sombra stretched out, popping her shoulders back. It sounded like a pretty good entry line. 

“Did I hear something about getting geared up?” She walked back into the main room, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over her chest. There was the ork - but _shit,_ what was the woman? She had no horns or tusks, but pointy ears that made her think of another one of Moira’s experiments gone wrong. Pretty - too damn pretty, the kind that would have sent her on a hunt for the image before it was touched up to almost artificial perfection.

“Are, this is Sombra. Sombra, this is Araceli, another ‘runner, and a mage.”

“Hola, amiga.”

“I’m not your friend,” the woman said, crossing her arms and glaring at Sombra. “We’re gonna have a lot of fixing to do, to make you able to pull off a run.”

“Fixing?” Sombra snorted and pushed off the wall. “I don’t need fixing. What I need is access to the web again, and all my information. And I’m ready to get it - by any means necessary.”

The ork looked at the slim uncanny figure beside him.

“See? Told you she’d fit right in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long, folks - I realized I needed to stop where I was lest I write myself accidentally into a corner. I'd rather take this slow and steady with irregular updates, than push myself for a schedule I can't be sure I'll keep.


End file.
